SokoChess White Review

SokoChess White is a spin-off of a minimalist block-pushing puzzle game developed and published by Daisy Games (a father and son duo, so cool!), which follows the same basic movements of chess, with the goal of getting pieces to where they belong. It’s a lot easier said than done, as is with most puzzle games, and in retrospect, I may be too dumb to truly solve every puzzle available.

The game features 70 puzzles to solve, featuring a variety of different obstacles to bend your mind, such as crates, freezing tiles and bombs, which you may recognise from the original SokoChess. The twist here is that there are no black pieces that can be used against you, and thus you can’t capture pieces, only push your own ones. If it makes things harder or not is up to you. It all seemed kinda simple on the surface…that is, until I got stuck on the fourth level and spent much longer that I’d like to admit figuring out the solution: moving onto the next available puzzle and hope I work out the solution later.

I did not, and finally relented into skipping puzzles. Moving on.

Like chess, everything is laid out in a clear and simple manner, and there is nothing hiding to surprise you. All the tools are there, you just have to figure out the moves to use them. Thinking ahead is a must to solve some of the tricker levels, and you’ll be undoing moves or resetting completely quite frequently. However, I never felt frustrated throughout my playtime as I could figure out where I went wrong, reset, and correct the mistake fairly easily. I had fun even as I was failing. Also, I liked how the game introduced puzzle elements, giving you an easy level to grasp the concept or experiment before throwing you into the deep end. It’s nice.

I don’t really have any gripes with the game other than I desperately needed a hint on some puzzles. SokoChess White is an excellent puzzle game that really tests your logic and block-pushing skills. And if you feel like something is too hard, well, the game won’t shame you for skipping a few and moving on.

SokoChess White will be released on Steam on the 3rd of March 2023.